Camp Pendleton Marines beat back insurgents

As casualties taper, commanders send in tanks in Sangin river valley in Afghanistan

In this March 26, 2010 photo, Canadian tanks belonging to the Lord Strathcona's Horse Tank Regiment moves as part of a sweep of villages southwest of Kandahar City, in Khenjakak, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Murray Brewster)
— AP

In this March 26, 2010 photo, Canadian tanks belonging to the Lord Strathcona's Horse Tank Regiment moves as part of a sweep of villages southwest of Kandahar City, in Khenjakak, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Murray Brewster)
/ AP

Camp Pendleton Marines made advances in recent weeks in their campaign to beat back insurgents in the hard-fought Sangin river valley — the Taliban’s last major stronghold in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, their commanding general said.

To help the infantrymen build on those gains, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment is getting an infusion of tanks, troops and counter-explosive equipment, said Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills, head of Marine forces in Afghanistan and NATO’s southwestern regional command.

Sangin is now the deadliest area for the Marines. The battalion has suffered heavy casualties, including the loss of at least 20 Marines in a little more than two months, since it moved into the fertile redoubt of poppy growers and Taliban fighters in October.

But Mills said casualties tapered in recent weeks even as the unit pushed up a strategic road toward the Kajaki dam, expanded security beyond the district center and held peace talks with village elders.

“The reason casualties are going down is because they are winning, plain and simple,” Mills said, in an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune from his Camp Leatherneck headquarters in Helmand province. The 3/5 Marines have not backed down, they “have gotten more aggressive; they have taken the fight harder to the enemy.”

The White House is expected to release details next week from a National Security Council review of the war. The report will reflect a more current picture of the war campaign than the one the Pentagon delivered to Congress last month, which included statistics three to six months old, said a senior administration official: “It’s really important to look at how quickly things are moving in Afghanistan.”

Last month the Pentagon reported a nearly 55 percent spike in attacks in the summer and early fall compared to the previous quarter, noting that the sharp uptick coincided with the arrival of additional forces and “the dramatically accelerated pace of operations,” among other factors such as national elections.

“Security remains tenuous and still needs considerable improvement in many areas. Progress is slow and deliberate,” the report stated.

In the runup to the White House assessment, senior defense leaders have been touting results from the surge of troops that finished arriving in Afghanistan this summer.

Battlefield commanders told Defense Secretary Robert Gates during a tour of the warzone this week that the Islamist insurgency remains potent in some areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, including pockets of the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar where most of the 30,000 additional forces headed.

Overall, however, Gates declared that momentum in the nine-year war had shifted. Progress “has exceeded my expectations,” he said.

Earlier in the week Mills had announced that the fight for Marjah, a poppy-growing hamlet where Marines started a major offensive in February, was “essentially over.” Marines from East Coast battalions continue to be killed in combat there, but less frequently than they were in the summer.

Gen. James Amos, the Marine commandant, said during a visit to San Diego this week that dramatic security improvements in Helmand province towns like Now Zad and Nawa since his visits in previous years should give the nation reason for optimism. “This is not wishful thinking. There have been significant differences,” he said.

But the fight in Sangin, where the British lost about a third of their war dead before pulling out in September, remains fierce, Amos added. He and the sergeant major of the Marine Corps plan to spend Christmas in Sangin, to inform the public about “the raw courage and sacrifice of those men.”

“We are now spreading out in the valley to places, quite honestly, coalition forces have never been. That is where the Taliban are squeezing out to,” Amos said.

Sangin will eventually go the way of Marjah and Fallujah, Iraq – two places Marines eventually subdued that were characterized as intractable, he said. “The enemy in Helmand province now has been pushed out of just about every place there.”

The Marines will get a boost in firepower when the first tanks are deployed by American forces in the nine-year war. Mills said his tank crews training now in Helmand will head to Sangin later this month. Eventually the tanks will also help secure provincial roads and screen the open deserts along the border with Pakistan.

Mills said his request for the tanks is not an escalation of tactics, when compared to the more lethal arsenal the U.S. already deploys in Afghanistan, including 2,000-pound bombs. But they will give the Marines a number of advantages.

“The enemy, his favorite tactic is to use a couple of his fighters as bait to lure you into IED belts. The gun on the main battle tank gives you good offset distance. You don’t need to approach; you can hit him from a long distance away,” Mills said.

The United States is deploying tanks long after the Canadians and Danes demonstrated their utility in Afghanistan, as mobile assault guns paired with infantry units, said David E. Johnson, a senior RAND Corp. researcher and retired Army colonel.

The tracked tanks are nimble and their 120 mm gun and superior optics can put a round through a window more than a mile away with less risk of “collateral damage” than other weapons, Johnson said.

Their heavy armor is also impervious to rocket-propelled grenades and all but the largest of improvised bombs. For the average insurgent, taking on a tank is “a suicide mission,” he said.

In addition to the tanks, Mills said he is adding a company of Marines to Sangin and he is shifting some equipment used against improvised bombs from calmer areas of the province, where it is no longer needed.

The 3/5 Marines are already making headway against insurgents in Sangin, Mills added. The battalion is finding three times as many improvised bombs as its Marines accidentally set off, it has pushed through old mine fields and it “has killed a whole bunch of enemy fighters. They have whittled down the enemy presence up there significantly,” Mills said.

“They are becoming savvy fighters in that kind of a jungle almost up there.”

Amid the progress by the Marines, U.S. commanders in Afghanistan are rebalancing their counterinsurgency strategy, said vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright. They are shifting toward more counterterrorism operations to hunt insurgent leaders and cut their supply lines across the border into Pakistan, he said.

Mills said he expects little to change for his troops in Helmand province, where conventional Marine units and Special Forces have been applying a mix of tactics - from operations to protect and serve the people to raids on insurgent safe houses.

“It is important that you hit the enemy hard,” Mills said, but “the flash to bang has got to be as quick as we can, to get the development projects started and show results for the people immediately.

“That’s the wonder of this generation of young Marines and sailors we have out here," he added. "They understand who we are fighting and who we are not fighting. They understand they need to protect the people.”